The Coffin Maker

Chapter 10

James Robert King's career as petty thief and drug dealer had undergone significant transformation since meeting Victoria Tantalo. After his junkie mother overdosed when he was four, dysfunctional family members took turns raising him. However, when his aunt's common law marriage fractured, little James Robert fell between the cracks and landed in the outstretched arms of the child protection services of the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Designed to provide a bridge to a permanent home, the system bandied James Robert from pillar to post until he became a familiar face in juvenile court. Unfortunately, but not entirely his fault, he squandered a natural ability to pitch a baseball and strayed into foul territory. During his high school years, he became a regular resident at the Juvenile Detention Center on Park Avenue, a few blocks from Target Field where James Robert might one day have worn a Twins cap and become a household name. To James Robert, Victoria was an enigma. She was the smartest person he knew. An incessant reader, she had broad knowledge and it was hard to find something she knew nothing about. She was addicted to the television show Jeopardy and from the adjoining room he could hear her call out responses ahead of the contestants. However, despite his lack of knowledge, she was a patient explainer, never condescending, and he began to appreciate the experience for he felt the things he was learning from her were leading him toward a happier and more purposeful life.

Victoria Tantalo was a girl who possessed all the faculties to go to college, gain a successful career and marry a prominent professional. However, at the age of fifteen, she decided to reject the straight and narrow teachings of her loving parents and instead hung out with a string of low-class losers all of whom she invited to loiter between her slender legs. By eighteen, she had a body type and shameless eyes that sent messages to the fantasy corner of every man's brain. She discovered the hotels where she could mingle with the attendees of the Minneapolis convention circuit and she learned to filch sex-starved attendees of the contents of their wallets and their watches while their wives looked after the children and the household responsibilities back home. Often, the 'score' was still enjoying the blissful sleep rewarded by Victoria's bedroom talents while she was mingling in the 'hospitality suite' choosing another victim. Older men carried cash, upwards of two thousand dollars, and a new Rolex was a common haul. Victoria suffered no repercussions. What man would publicize the price of his infidelity?

She called him Jimbo. They met in a bar when she asked where to buy some weed. He possessed the rough around the edges trait that attracted her to a man. In under an hour, they consummated the relationship and were soon living together. He called her Vicki. She convinced John Robert to raise his game, to put on a thinking cap and develop grander methods of stealing other people's money, or as Vicki hypothesized, "Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb."

An idea came to him to burgle homes in affluent neighborhoods while the owners were preoccupied with the funerals of their dearly departed. He talked to one of his drug associates who had been to New York where a rash of similar burglaries had precipitated a change in the manner in which families were publicizing funerals and weddings. John Robert bought a copy of the Star Tribune and began monitoring the print and online obituaries which listed the times and dates of memorial services and funerals. Victoria was somewhat disappointed by the plan, she had hoped he might set his sights higher, something along the lines of fine art theft or a big jewelry heist, but she decided to support him because she wanted him to stop dealing drugs and strive to become what she referred to as a respectable criminal.

James Robert soon discovered that the death and dying industry produced ample material for the obituary columns. With Victoria's help, he developed a checklist system whereby he searched the columns for candidates with the highest social standing and effusive eulogies that offered an exhaustive list of accomplishments. He found it easy to run cross references with the names and establish the location of the residences of the deceased. Quick searches on map programs revealed which homes were in swank neighborhoods. The funeral service companies did their part by announcing when the houses would be empty by providing the times and locations of funeral or memorial services.

Together, they set out on their first joint venture. The target house met all the criteria, an affluent neighborhood, a widow joined by grieving family members to lay to rest a husband, father and grandfather who had worked a lifetime in the insurance industry. Unbeknownst to James Robert or Victoria, private investigator Ailsa Craig was in the same neighborhood reconnoitering a suspect in a rash of serial killings and had parked her Camry in front of the target house.